Hegemony and governmentality

Introduction

Hegemony and governmentality are two hugely influential concepts that might be said

to have a difficult, albeit under-developed relationship. Writing in 2005 Clive Barnett

suggested that a reconciliation of the Marxist approach to hegemony and

poststructualist reflections on governmentality was well underway, but went on to

warn of the limitations of this ‘marriage of convenience’ (2005: 8). Sometime later,

and it is less a case of the marriage having failed, than that the marriage seems not to

have happened. While there have been some notable interventions (Jessop 2007,

Lemke 2007) we still await a full scale application. This paper is concerned to

reactivate the project, while addressing some of the reservations of critics like Barnett

and others. It will be done by applying the combined concepts to the realm of

international relations (IR) and in particular to issues of global governance. The latter

seems a reasonable place to focus given that it has been at the centre of a new wave of

theorising ‘global governmentality’, while having long been seen by neo-Gramscians

in IR as an example of a historical bloc. We will argue here that global governance

can be meaningfully understood in relation to both concepts, but that a great deal of

theoretical development is required in order to combine them. While this piece does

not pretend to have found the solution, it offers the basis of a research project, both to

IR scholars and to the wider audience of social theorists.

The way this will be done is more consistent with Gramscian approaches to

hegemony than it is with the arguments of Foucault’s poststructuralist followers. This

is to take an ontological approach and to widen the focus to instigate the conditions of

possibility for both hegemony and governmentality. In looking at what makes

hegemony and governmentality possible, as well as examining the basis on which

they might combine or overlap, the paper develops a realist ontology, a position at

odds with Foucauldian (and possible neo-Gramscian) arguments. For this reason, it

would be wrong, for this contribution to be read as an elaboration or development of

either school. The ultimate aim is not to develop a perfect understanding of either

concept, but to show how they might contribute to an understanding of the social

world as structured and stratified in a certain way and how they might reveal the

emergent social features of international relations.

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Hegemony, actors and agents

Hegemony is a difficult enough concept even before we get to the way Robert Cox

and others have scaled-up the concept to relate it to international relations. It is well

known that Gramsci’s fragmentary writings on hegemony develop several different

understandings of hegemony. At its most straightforward, hegemony can be said to

emphasise the importance of gaining consent – something that is used in IR to counter

the hard power arguments of realists who only see hegemony in terms of domination.

The social definition of hegemony describes the way that social groups achieve

dominance through the construction of complex hegemonic projects that bring

together various groups and articulate a variety of different interests. While some

groups dominate within these alliances, the alliance is necessary if these groups are to

gain wider consent. The term hegemony refers to the process by which social

leadership is constructed, while the term historical bloc locates this in a particular

time and place – for example the idea of the postwar historical bloc explains the

complex social and institutional reconfigurations that took place after the Second

World War.

While this is straightforward enough – the elaboration of political projects, the

construction of alliances and the articulation of interests – how and where this takes

place is subject to debate. Is hegemony a project that articulates itself through the

state – a state strategy? Or does it belong more to civil society? Is the latter the realm

of consent while the former a more coercive body? If hegemony belongs to civil

society, then how is civil society to be defined? All these issues are brought together

in an influential article by Perry Anderson where he points to three conflicting

arguments in Gramsci (1976: 12-13) – first that the state is seen in contrast to civil

society (Gramsci 1971: 238), second that the state encompasses civil society

(hegemony is protected by the armour of coercion (Gramsci 1971: 263)) and third that

‘“State” should be understood not only [as] the apparatus of government, but also the

“private” apparatus of “hegemony” or civil society’ (Gramsci 1971: 261).

If such concerns are seen as a problem of locating hegemony within society, they

multiply when scaling up the concept to apply it to international relations. If

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hegemony works within domestic societies through the activities of social groups,

does this mean that in the international arena we also find these groups as the main

actors? Robert Cox attempts to stay faithful to this definition but often ends up with a

view of hegemony as the relations between states. He talks of hegemony developing

when a ‘leading nation’s conception of the world becomes universalized’ (Cox 1996:

245). Elsewhere he says that international hegemony ‘derives from the ways of doing

and thinking of the dominant strata of the dominant state or states’ Cox1996: 151).

The latter is a more stratified understanding of this relationship between groups and

states. And elsewhere Cox reveals the complexity of these relations when he says that:

Hegemony at the international level is thus not merely an order among states.

It is an order within a world economy with a dominant mode of production

which penetrates into all countries and links into other subordinate modes of

production. It is also a complex of international social relationships which

connect the social classes of the different countries. World hegemony is

describable as a social structure, an economic structure, and a political

structure; and it cannot be simply one of these things but must be all three.

(Cox 1996: 137)

We will not attempt to address these problems all at once, but raise them here as a

starting point of our analysis. Clearly there are complex issues to be dealt with in

terms of our understanding of how structures and agents interact and how social,

economic and political issues interrelate. Scaled up to the international realm, these

problems multiply since the international adds an inter-societal dynamic to an already

complex equation.1

However, I will suggest two quick fixes that will be elaborated on in more detail

elsewhere. One relates to the problem of agency. While Gramscian approaches are

clear enough in their attribution of agency to social groups, the scaling up of the

concept to international relations raises the problem of state actions given that

traditionally the state is seen as the main actor in IR. The solution to this issue is to

distinguish between actors and agents. From the point of view of the sociology of

structure and agency, only people, or groups of people possess the unique 1 For a discussion of IR as inter-societal see Rosenberg (2006).

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characteristics of agency – as capable of conscious, reflexive and intentional actions

(see Carter and New 2004: 5). Hence states cannot be considered agents in this sense

unless one attributes personhood to them (as might be found in Wendt’s (2004) case).

States are more like structures in the sense that they have such properties as

anteriority, relative endurability and powers of allocation, enablement and constraint.

However, states might be considered actors by virtue of the agents within them. This

leads to a complex relationship which brings us to our second argument. That is the

need for a differentiated social ontology that recognises that the actions of social

agents are stratified across a number of social layers. The theory of hegemony shows

us that groups of agents act through the state in order to implement certain policies.

However, the state cannot be reduced to the actions of these agents, nor can the

actions of agents be confined to the realm of the state. There are a range of complex

relationships that will be investigated in more detail further on. However, we can

formalise our account of this relationship as one where groups of people exercise

agency in specific social and historical contexts and interact across different layers

and levels. In other words agency, including the exercise of hegemony, is socially

stratified. And among a stratification of different social contexts (structures) we might

point to the state as a particularly significant institution. In international relations

states are key actors. They act by virtue of the agency possessed by particular social

groups. Hence hegemony can be a way of explaining this complex relationship.

However, we will go on to argue that state actions are emergent social features insofar

as they are dependent on underlying agency, but cannot be reduced to the actions

themselves. This more structural understanding of the role of states can be used to

challenge reductive accounts of state action as might be found in mainstream realism

and liberal accounts of IR whose errors are either to attribute rational agency to states

themselves, or else to reduce state agency to the calculations of key decision makers.2

A structural understanding of actors also helps deal with issues of consciousness and

intent. Rather than reducing these to rational intent (neorealism) or intersubjective

agreement (Cox, Habermas) we can say that conscious actions take place within a set

of already existing social conditions. These conditions shape the way the action takes

place. But they also shape the agents’ understanding of the actions and their situation. 2 Such errors are embedded in the DNA of mainstream positions. Even more sophisticated attempts to bring in more complexity, for example neoclassical realism, remain wedded to a view of agents as decision makers.

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And because our situation is in fact complexly stratified, a full understanding of our

position usually eludes us. Social situatedness means that conscious actions often

have unintended consequences. At this point it makes sense to bring in Foucault’s

arguments in order to extend this argument through discourse. For just as wage-

labourers under capitalism unconsciously reproduce capitalist economic relations, so

the writers and artists of the Middle Ages unconsciously reproduced a classical

episteme. In other words, rationalities or mentalities pre-exist and condition the

conceptions of particular agents in a similar way to other social relations. While we

could develop this across a wide range of discursive domains, we will concentrate on

this in relation to processes of governance and move to Foucault’s concept of

governmentality.

Defining governmentality and its relationship to hegemony

One argument for bringing in governmentality is that it is better at explaining

discursive power and provides an account of the rationalities of governance that is

missing from Gramscian approaches. In suggesting that these rationalities of

governance are distinct from and thus shape the actual views and beliefs of agents, it

can counteract the tendency in neo-Gramscian accounts to see social activity as a

manifestation of intersubjective world views or to attribute conscious intent to every

outcome. Even hegemonic projects themselves cannot claim to be purely a product of

conscious agency. To claim otherwise would be to embrace the kind of instrumental

logic that Gramsci’s approach sets out to avoid.

More specifically, the concept of governmentality highlights the rationalities that

underlie forms of governance. It combines this aspect with a focus on the actual

practices of governance that shape the conduct of conduct. In other words, the concept

lies at the intersection of discourses and practices of governance. This is a very broad

definition and, as Walters notes (2012: 12), Foucault himself traces this relationship

through the governance of and by states. Walters and others would want to emphasise

that there is nothing special about the state and that governmentality, as a set of

practices and techniques that make the state meaningful could equally be applied to

other, non-state forms of governance. This is certainly legitimate and I do not wish to

claim that such an approach is wrong. But as Walters goes on to say, not only does

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Foucault largely focus on practices of the state, but he does so through a focus on

specifically liberal practices which first emerge in the eighteenth century (Walters

2012: 12). Walters and some IR theorists argue that just because Foucault focuses

more on state forms of governance, and particularly liberal ones, this does not mean

we should ignore the broader field of governance beyond the activities of the state

(Walters 2012: 13). My argument is that because we are doing IR this is precisely

where we should focus given that states are the main actors and the dominant form of

international hegemony is a liberal one.

Most of Foucault’s work on governmentality emphasises the liberal element of rule.

Liberal governance is distinguished from other forms of power by its emphasis on

free conduct, self-awareness and self-limitation. In contrast to more coercive

disciplinary power, liberal governmentality works from a distance by seeking to

create free and active subjects. The rationality of liberal governance is to respect the

freedom of the governed and to allow things to take their natural course. Government

comes to be understood as respecting the freedom of social and economic processes

through the deliberate self-limiting of government – an intrinsic part of governmental

rationality (Foucault 2008 : 10). Laissez-faire governance, based on the liberal

principles of political economy, finds its expression in civil society and is legitimated

through the liberal concern that one must not ‘govern too much’ (Foucault 2008 :

319). However, this freedom and liberty is a social construction that is reinforced

through a particular set of social practices that reinforce rational, normalised conduct.

Liberalism, Foucault tells us, ‘works not through the imperative of freedom, but

through the social production of freedom and the ‘management and organization of

the conditions in which one can be free’ (Foucault 2008: 63–4).

Neoliberalism might be said to be an intensification of the liberal dynamic that

introduces the norms and values of the market into other areas of social life through

the promotion of competition, initiative and risk-taking. Foucault talks of ‘society

regulated by reference to the market … a society subject to the dynamic of

competition … an enterprise society’ (2008: 147). Instead of direct governance, the

state steps back and encourages people to become more enterprising. They are

appealed to as citizens or consumers who are ‘free’ to take responsibility for their own

life choices but who are expected to follow competitive rules of conduct with the

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logic of enterprise applied to individual acts. Rather than seeing neoliberalism purely

as a doctrine of the free market, it is, according to Dean, a cultural form of

governance based on ethical orientations, self- responsibility and the moral

obligations invoked by notions of freedom and the exercising of agency (Dean 2007:

73).

This is of importance to those looking at how society works through practices of

regulation, normalisation and legitimation. So clearly there is some overlap with

hegemony. Indeed we might compare Foucault’s analysis of neoliberalism to

Gramsci’s analysis of Americanism and Fordism. Both theorists show that the ideas

which might at first be seen as relating to the market or production process are spread

across society and their influence ranges for forms of state regulation and intervention

right down to popular culture and forms of everyday life. Having said this, the

governmentality approach has shown itself to be far better at providing the fine detail

in comparison to hegemony’s broader overview. Indeed the greatest contribution

governmentaly makes is to highlight the micro practices by which conduct is shaped.

Taking population as its target and political economy as its means of intervention,

liberal governmentality uses a range of technologies, techniques and methods of

calculation; methods such as auditing, examination, standardisation, benchmarking

and peer review applied across a diversity of areas from education and welfare to

town planning and community resilience to international aid and development

programmes.

While the strength of a governmentality approach is the attention to fine detail, the

focus on the micro level should not be turned into a virtue. Foucault’s concern to

redress the balance by focussing on micro practices is not the same thing as giving

these practices ontological primacy. For Foucault the micro level is important because

power always emerges at a given place and time as an ill developed cluster of

relations (Foucault 1980: 199). The great strategies of power as exercised at the macro

level ‘depend for their conditions of exercise on the level of the micro-relations of

power’ (ibid.). But there are also movements in the opposite direction as these powers

seek to ‘produce new effects and advance into hitherto unaffected domains’ (ibid.,

200). This two way relationship between macro and micro powers of governance can

be applied to something like the development of neoliberalism. This saw the

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emergence of a number of open-ended micro-practices that lacked an overall logic,

but which were gradually colonised at the macro level and given the coherence of a

neoliberal rationality (see Rose 1999: 27). This logic then was applied from above –

i.e. by government policy – to an increasing number of domains like health, welfare

and security, previously considered inappropriate areas for free market logic. In order

to analyse this, according to Foucault:

we should make an ascending analysis of power… begin with its infinitesimal

mechanisms, which have their own history, their own trajectory, their own

techniques and tactics, and then look at how these mechanisms of power…

have been and are invested, colonized, used, inflected, transformed, displaced,

extended and so on by increasingly general mechanisms and forms of overall

domination. (Foucault 2004: 30)

This argument can be applied to macro institutions like the state. It can also be

brought into IR to look at the role of international organisations like the World Bank

and IMF. But in seeing how macro powers may colonise already existing micro

practices in order to shape them into some kind of project, we can equally apply this

to the development of hegemonic projects. And working this both ways, we might

claim that a Gramscian approach can help bring to our understanding of the process of

colonisation an appreciation of the necessary strategies and tactics by which groups

build their power. This returns to our understanding of agency insofar as strategy and

tactics require conscious intent, yet they operate in conditions not of the actors’ own

choosing, making what they can of the resources that are available. Groups do not

create hegemony afresh, they take up already existing micro practices, discourses and

established patterns of conduct – things that might pre-exist a particular project, but

which Foucault shows can be colonised and brought together by deploying a macro-

level strategy.

If governmentality provides a detailed account of the techniques, then hegemony

provides a better account of their strategic deployment. Indeed, unless we want to

revert to very general claims about epistemes and discursive frameworks, then

something like hegemony is necessary to explain why it is that certain forms of

governmentality rise to prominence at particular moments. While already-existing

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micro conditions might be said to provide the resources for hegemonic projects,

hegemonic projects provide a better causal explanation of why certain technologies

and techniques come to the fore. Governmentality does not rise spontaneously from

these micro conditions, but is inextricably tied to the processes of colonisation,

articulation and deployment. This requires the kind of account provided by Gramscian

analysis, but it also requires a deeper understanding of the social as might be found in

scientific realist accounts of the social world.

Developing a structural approach

Combining governmentality with hegemony allows for a much clearer focus on

social, historical and institutional context. This helps us take us beyond how

governmentality works to why it works in the way it does. Hence neoliberal

governmentality comes to prominence due to a specific set of micro practices being

used as part of a particular macro strategy that has been shaped by social and

historical context. This requires an investigation of processes of ‘de-statification’ that

are associated with the reorganisation of the postwar historical bloc and involve the

associated policies of privatisation, devolution of state powers, attacks on organised

labour and the reorganisation of institutional architecture.

Indeed, this broader historical picture is necessary if we are to make sense of

variations in governmentality and why it is that certain forms of governmentality are

dominant. Indeed, a study of global politics shows that the dominance of

neoliberalism today is not universal; it does not always enjoy success. It has different

outcomes in different contexts, meets different forms of resistance, comes up against

different social systems and does not enjoy the same underlying support form one

society to the next. A study of international institutions like the World Bank, IMF and

United Nations shows them to be heavily influenced by Anglo Saxon neoliberal ideas.

This will come as no surprise to neo-Gramscian IR theorists who see such

organisations as part of the hegemonic (post-) Washington consensus. But as we shall

see, a study of actual practices finds that they are not always successful in achieving

their aims. Whether we choose to call this Western hegemony or neoliberal

governmentality, the reality is that such strategies, even if driven by a particular logic,

come up against the reality of differentiated social relations at the point where they

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are deployed. This is not a matter of suggesting that less developed countries cannot

be governmentalised (Death, Vrasti). We need only at governmentality across EU

member states to see its uneven application and outcomes. Or we could examine the

French political system to see why it is that Anglo Saxon techniques of

governmentality are far less enthusiastically embraced in a society with an

interventionist state, a centralised top-down institutional structure and strong civic and

solidarist discourses. A study of the conditions of possibility for governmentality

means a study of the social relations present in each case.

To understand why the discourse and practices of neoliberal governmentality find

more resonance in, say, the UK, than in France, we need to go beyond the

governmentality approach. A theory of hegemony is better at providing an account of

things like the wider institutional context, the role of class forces, how particular

interests are represented, how projects are constructed and how deeper structural

issues are responded to. While most of these issues can be dealt with through more

agential approaches to hegemony, the final issue requires a structural reading of

hegemony that is often missing in the neo-Gramscian accounts in IR (see Joseph

2008). This is despite a clear structural element being present in Gramsci’s work and

despite Cox’s claim to be integrating an analysis of world order with an understanding

of processes of production.

Gramsci’s work, while pulled in different directions by diverse influences,

nevertheless contains some clear references to the deeper structural conditions that

make hegemony possible. Most explicit is his comment that: ‘Structures and

superstructures form an “historical bloc”. That is to say the complex, contradictory

and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the

social relations of production’ (Gramsci 1971: 366). The historical bloc is therefore

not merely a relation between groups, or ‘the ways of doing and thinking of the

dominant strata of the dominant state or states’ (Cox 151). The relations between

these groups are set within a structural context and represent a particular intervention

by groups into the nexus of social structures and in particular, the social relations of

production. Hegemony, Gramsci writes, ‘must necessarily be based on the decisive

function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity’

(Gramsci 1971: 161). For a group to become hegemonic it must have behind it the

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economic, political and cultural conditions that allow it to put itself forward as

leading.

While structural approaches tend to undermine the idea of agency – for example

neorealism in IR, or structural Marxism – the idea of hegemony works to

problematise social structure. It suggests that while there may be deeper structural

tendencies, these do not automatically reproduce themselves, but need to be socially

secured. Hegemony is a concept that suggests that social cohesion can only be

achieved through active intervention. In contrast to constructivist approaches that see

institutional analysis as an end in itself, a structural approach to hegemony allows us

to seeing institutions as fixes between deeper structures and the balance of social

groups at particular moments in time. It allows us to ask the questions that

constructivists might ask of the relationship between institutions, norms and social

practices, but also the relationship between institutions and the underlying social

structures that provide their conditions of possibility. The idea of the historical bloc is

precisely such an idea. For a historical bloc to endure it must not only secure unity

between social actors, but must also relate to the deeper underlying trends in the

social and economic spheres. The postwar bloc was able to do this by drawing on

underlying changes in the production process (Fordism) and by facilitating a period of

sustained economic growth through interventionist state policies that could provide

the foundations for welfare and social prosperity. Once this model started to break

down in the 1970s, a new strategy of neoliberal (de)regulation began to emerge.

This lack of accounting for structural situatedness is where some of the governance

literature goes wrong. While practices are conscious in intent, their wider structural

context means that they cannot be reduced to conscious activities. The structural

context is necessary to explain why certain actions have unconscious or unintended

consequences and why actors are often only partially aware of the processes in which

they are engaged. It also explains why some agents, thanks to their structural

positioning, are able to act in a more influential way, while will act with less

awareness and less ability to change their situation. This goes for hegemonic projects

as much as for any other social practice. We distinguish, therefore, between the

deeply embedded nature of hegemony and hegemonic projects as carried out by social

groups. The projects that are acted out always have an underlying basis.

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In many ways, the governmentality approach actually adds to this sense of wider

structural conditions for the reasons given earlier. It provides an account of the

background rationalities that elude the full consciousness of the agents who act. It

does not provide the full picture, however. And those poststructuralists who are

content to rely on a theory of governmentality to explain global politics miss out on a

range of other structural conditions as well as reducing the matter to questions of

mentality and governance. Not surprisingly, this is reflected in the ontological stance

taken by many governmentality theorists – Larner and Walters openly claim to be

‘bracketing’ the world of underlying causes (2005: 16). Walters argues the case ‘for

shifting our attention away from questions of deep structures and institutional

processes, and toward an understanding… at the level of mentalities and rationalities

of government’ (Walters, 2005: 157). This is honestly stated and shows awareness

that these things may be out there. But my question would be whether it is ever

possible to remain at the level of mentalities and rationalities without looking at their

conditions of possibility. How do we explain variations in these at different times and

in different places? I will briefly address this by looking at global governance.

The state and global governance

Global governance is a problematic notion that raises more questions than answers. In

IR literature it is often reduced to the neoliberal idea of regimes and a minimal basis

of agreement by which states advance their interests. Or otherwise it is overstated to

the point where global governance is said to be undermining state power and shifting

it to regional or transnational levels. The good thing about a governmentality

approach is that it can explain how global governance works without buying into the

ontological assumptions of many of the global governance theorists. This is not quite

the same as following Walters’ advice to concentrate on the mentalities and

rationalities. But it allows for a study of such things while recognising the

exaggerated nature of some of the claims about new forms of global governance.

In particular these writers fall into the trap of thinking that power is passing from

states to international organisations and transnational institutions when in fact what is

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occurring is the governmentalisation of the state from within. International

organisations reflect the dominant processes taking place within the dominant states.

While theorists of global governance like James Rosenau argue that power is passing

to transnational and supranational organisations above the state, NGOs and social

movements alongside it, and subnational groups downwards (2006: 116), the reality is

that states are willingly ceding or devolving power in order to govern from a distance.

The concepts of governmentality and hegemony can play important roles in providing

an alternative account of global governance. Governmentality, as mentioned can show

that what is mistaken for global governance is actually a process of neoliberal

governmentalitalisation of the state and social relations, while hegemony can explain

that this is taking place due to the break-up of the postwar historical bloc and that

what we see globally is being driven by the dominant groups in the dominant states.

Rather than disappearing from the scene, the state is at the centre of both

explanations.

According to Rosenau, new forms of global governance reflect a disaggregated,

decentred world with new spheres of authority, no single organising principle, and

greater flexibility, innovation and experimentation in use of control mechanisms

(2006: 124). The second part of this claim is certainly correct and is highlighted by

the governmentality approach. This makes the world seem disaggregated and

decentred. But this disaggregation and decentring is, paradoxically, the result of

strategies carried out by the dominant states. The rest of this section argues that what

is mistaken for global governance is a neoliberal form of governmentality pushed by

states, pushed on states and pushed through states.

This represents a new phase of hegemony, one that is marked by the processes of

reshaping historical blocs and shifting strategies of governance. Historical blocs are

being reshaped both locally and globally. Domestically we saw in places like the US

and UK new forms of state strategy and regulation based on rolling back state

provision and promoting the free market while encouraging more individualistic

forms of social responsibility. The governmentality approach shows how these

became institutionalised through various practices of governance. Rather than being

marginalized, the state acts as the main site for the codification of power relations

through new governmental projects and modes of calculation (Jessop 2007: 150). In a

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two way dialogue, the state shapes new forms of governmentality and

governmentality re-shapes the state.

This is the same rationality driving new forms of global governance. If we look at the

most influential international organisations, they are shaped by the same neoliberal

understanding of social and economic relations. Within the IMF, World Bank, UN

and EU we find similar discourses that emphasise the free market, good governance,

responsible action and accountability. Likewise across a range of areas from poverty

reduction to state-building to EU projects, we find the same ideas of devolved powers,

local ownership, partnership, stakeholding, networked forms of governance and active

citizenship. It is no accident that these discourses are so similar. They are shaped by

the same dominant rationality.

While governmentality explains what this rationality is and how it works, hegemony

explains how and why this rationality is dominant. Having come to the fore in the

United States and Anglo Saxon counties, this rationality is reflected in international

organisations due to the fact that these organisations are not global, but reflect the

dominant power relations in the international system. Just as the US was able to shape

a postwar hegemonic order through a new set of international institutions and

regimes, so now, transformations with the US domestic economy and society are

shaping a new international order. The fact that this order promotes the free market

and devolution of state powers reflects the imbalance of global power relations and

the heavy influence of particular state strategies within this order. Those who claim

this represents a new form of global governance are unwittingly reinforcing this

particular expression of power.

Having given the bigger picture, we can briefly describe how this hegemony is

expressed through particular strategies and techniques. Here the governmentality

approach helps us to understand the interventions of international organisations in

certain areas. For example, in the post-structural adjustment era local states are told

that they can have ‘ownership’ of the policy agenda in partnership with international

and local (civil society) stakeholders. But to get development assistance a government

must present a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) to the executive boards of

the IMF and World Bank. These are assessed for whether their strategy constitutes a

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sound basis for assistance (see Klugman 2002 for an overview of the process). To

help make such decisions, the 2005 Paris Declaration establishes a wide variety of

indicators for monitoring performance, accountability and government credibility.

This monitoring from a distance while presenting the process as a free and fair

partnership based on local ownership clearly represents a form of governmentality.

The post-Washington consensus approach entails ‘building institutions for markets’

(Word Bank 2002). Getting countries to develop their own PRSPs is not about

development, it is about getting countries to open up to global capital, reform their

institutions accordingly and implement market friendly policies. This is achieved

through a more subtle array of governmentalising techniques that appear to be

operating from a distance while encouraging local participation and responsibility.

While the global governance theorists are announcing the decline in the powers of the

state, organisations like the World Bank recognise that it is actually only through the

state that this will be achieved. This targeting of state policy by state dominated

international organisations is an international governmentality of states, or what

Michael Merlingen calls ‘the international conduct of the conduct of countries’

(Merlingen 2003: 367).

Whether we look at poverty reduction, or other areas of international politics such as

peacekeeping, conflict resolution or state-building, we find the same discourse and

practices. All use techniques of governmentality to monitor and regulate the

behaviour of states. While promoting civil society, NGOs and other non-state actors,

they have states as their main target because they recognise that it is only through the

state that such micro practices can be successfully codified. Whether or not they are

successful in practice is another matter that I have discussed elsewhere (Joseph 2012).

But to understand how the dominant strata in the dominant states work through

international organisations in order to get less powerful states to implement market

friendly, neoliberal policies, requires not only a concept like governmentality, but also

a theory like hegemony that can explain the balance of power relations that lies

behind the strategies and techniques of governance.

A theory of hegemony also allows room for resistance. It points not just to the driving

rationality behind global governance, nor just the practices that are implemented, but

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also the gaps, limits and failings. It is better at showing how power operates on a

global scale. The neoliberal policies of states and international organisations cannot

just be understood as a rationality. They are implemented by social groups as part of

their projects. These projects take place through states, and are often imposed on other

states. Hegemony shows the inequality of global power relations. By concentrating on

mentalities and techniques governmentality does not tell us much about why these

strategies may find resonance in some countries but not in others, or why and how

governance strategies are resisted. Hegemony can do this because it points to both

structural weaknesses and agential possibilities. It is counter-hegemony, not counter-

governmentality that ultimately decides the fate of these practices.

Conclusion

The concept of hegemony helps us to understand such things as institutional context,

the role of social and class forces, how particular interests are represented and how

political projects are constructed. The concept of governmentality is much better at

showing us the specific techniques and technologies of power. We have seen, for

example, how it highlights a range of practices that monitor, benchmark and peer

review and a range of rationalities that responsibilise actors, give ‘ownership’, justify

‘partnership’ and operate from a distance through the construction of rational and

‘free’ conduct. Governmentality renders visible the space over which governance will

occur, constructing a world of networked actors behaving rationally in a globalised

context. It promotes the idea that global forces are beyond our control hence justifying

the micro-practices that encourage individual self-government.

While hegemony might provide the better link to the social context, governmentality

better shows how this finds its expression in particular forms of governance. It

highlights the specific use that can be made of mechanisms of individualisation and

normalisation. This helps us to understand something like neoliberalism as not only

about promoting free market ideas, but as a form of social regulation and normalised

conduct that uses the idea of freedom to promote the individualisation and

responsibilisation of social actors. But how do such practices become hegemonic?

Even if we accept Foucault’s argument that power starts from below and then gets

exercised through various institutional sites, how are we going to explain this process

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of increasing institutionalisation without a theory like hegemony? Does

governmentality have its own logic separate from the projects and practices that

promote it?

In part, however, it does. Foucault helps us to understand how rationalities pre-exist

the conscious acts of agents and maybe even particular hegemonic projects. Micro

practices provide the resources that hegemonic projects might ‘colonise’. This helps

determine the type of hegemony that is possible. Hegemony is not formed out of

nothing but is shaped by already existing practices. In this sense governmentality

shapes hegemony. But it is also clear that it is the nature of hegemonic projects that

determines how governmentality develops and why, for example, a particular

neoliberal form of governmentality started to be institutionalised in the 1980s. The

easiest solution to the conundrum of what comes first is to suggest that there is no

clear hierarchical or causal chain, but rather a set of overlapping and co-determining

social processes. Rather than being foundational, forms of hegemony and

governmentality are emergent and overlapping aspects of the social whole. A realist

social ontology argues that they are dependent on underlying conditions of possibility

like relations of production, but are not reducible to the lower levels and have their

own emergent properties and characteristics.

The back and forth between hegemony and governmentality can be likened to the

back and forth between micro and macro, or structure and agency, or perhaps most

appropriately, between condition and outcome. Governmentality is both a pre-existing

condition and an emergent outcome of various projects and strategies. It provides

hegemony with an element of tangibility, showing the ways by which it is enacted,

reproduced and transformed. Hegemony provides an important agential element,

relating governmentality to the actual projects of particular social groups. In doing so

it provides governmentality with a degree of challengeability, showing

governmentality to be vulnerable in two senses. First, vulnerable to defects in the

underlying structural sense – the social terrain on which it operates exposing gaps,

fissures and over-stretch; second, to the activities of agents who are organised and

strategically oriented. In doing this, some of the mystique of governmentality is

removed. And perhaps this is the first step in making the challenge.

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